II.

For nearly a century and a half, dating from the landing
of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, the condition of
laboring women was that of the same class in all struggling
colonies. There were practically no women wage-earners,
save in domestic service, where a home and from thirty
to a hundred dollars a year was accounted wealth,
the latter sum being given in a few instances to the
housekeepers in great houses. Each family represented
a commonwealth, and its women gave every energy to
the crowding duties of a daily life filled with manifold
occupations.

The farmer—­for all were farmers—­was
often blacksmith, shoemaker, and carpenter, and more
or less proficient in every trade whose offices were
called for in the family life. The farmer’s
wife spun and wove the cloth he wore and the linen
that made his household furnishing, and was dyer and
dresser, brewer and baker, seamstress, milliner, and
dressmaker. The quickness, adaptiveness to new
conditions, and the fertility of resource which are
recognized as distinguishing the American, were born
of the colonial struggle, especially of the final
one which separated us forever from English rule.

The wage of the few women found in labor outside the
home was gauged by that which had ruled in England.
For unskilled labor, as that employed occasionally
in agriculture, this had been from one shilling and
sixpence for ordinary field work to two shillings a
week paid in haying and harvest time. For hoeing
corn or rough weeding there is record of one shilling
per week, and this is the usual wage for old women.
To this were added various allowances which have gradually
fallen into disuse. A full record of these and
of rates in general will be found in “Six Centuries
of Work and Wages."[4]

Unskilled labor during the whole colonial period—­meaning
by this such labor as that of the men who sawed wood,
dug ditches, or mended roads, mixed mortar for the
mason, carried boards to the carpenter, or cut hay
in harvest time—­brought a wage of seldom
more than two shillings a day, fifteen shillings a
week making a man the envy of his fellows, while six
or seven was the utmost limit for women of the same
order.